The metal detectors offered no further resistance; when she asked a page for directions, he too offered a bemused expression and directed her down the building’s main hallway.
“Fourth office on the left, Miss,” he said with a smile.
She came into the waiting room outside Senator Kircher’s wing of offices and approached the fiftysomething woman behind the reception desk. Laramie identified herself, told the woman she was here to see the senator, and said, “He may not know me by name, but he’ll be familiar with my e-mail address. It’s EastWest7. I believe he’ll be interested in hearing from me.”
Laramie almost blew a gasket when the woman gave her the same sort of inside-joke look offered by the security guard and page.
“Sure,” the receptionist said. “‘EastWest7,’ is it?”
“Correct. I’d like to see him immediately.”
“Do you have any information?” the receptionist said. When Laramie stared uncomprehendingly at her, the woman said, “A résumé?” and pushed an eight-by-ten head shot of a very attractive woman across the countertop, not all the way over to Laramie but far enough for her to see.
Laramie examined the photograph from her upside-down perspective. The receptionist looked Laramie over and smiled a motherly smile. “Tell you what,” she said. “The senator isn’t meeting with constituents today, but one of his aides is here. Why don’t you go ahead and wait over there and I’ll put a good word in for you.” When the woman tilted her chin toward the chairs behind her, Laramie turned to see that there was another woman seated in the waiting room. The woman was stunning. Tall. And thin. Laramie also noticed, connecting the dots now, that the woman did not exactly possess the demeanor of, say, a lobbyist, or a fellow representative.
It was the same woman she’d just seen in the head shot.
A door opened behind the reception desk and a man who reminded Laramie of Rob Lowe leaned out. The receptionist turned and handed him the other woman’s head shot and an accompanying sheet of paper. Rob examined the photograph, nodded, and looked across Laramie until his eyes landed on the other woman in the room. He smiled.
“Sherrie? Come on in,” he said.
When the stunningly beautiful woman had strolled through the doorway and Rob Lowe closed the door, Laramie, feeling somewhat short and plain, looked at the receptionist.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said.
The woman smiled.
Laramie said, “The reason I’m asking to see-”
She abandoned the explanation midstream. She dug into her purse for a pen, and in as polite a tone as she could muster, said, “Would you happen to have a pad of paper back there?”
“Of course.”
Laramie chose a seat as far from where the other woman had been sitting as she could find. Fighting a gag reflex at the prospect of another “constituent” coming in and mistaking her for a fellow aspirant to the Rob Lowe preinterview, she composed with her pen and the receptionist’s pad a six-page letter that would bring Kircher up to speed on her findings since the last whistle-blower e-mail. She included her theories on the topic of collusion between General and now-Premier Deng Jiang, North Korea, and the remainder of the declared or aspiring Marxist-Leninist dictatorships Cooper had photographed on the remote island resort. She also included her hypothesis on Peter M. Gates’s apparent systematic model of withholding important intelligence from his superiors until the moment of greatest political expediency-expediency for his own career.
When she was through, she checked the document for mistakes-an impulse she rarely possessed the strength to buck-and folded the pages in half. She wrote the following words across one of the blank sides:
TO: SENATOR KIRCHER
FR: EASTWEST7 (AKA JULIE LARAMIE, CIA)
RE: CHINA AND OTHER MATTERS
She had started to write her cell number below the subject line when, deciding the disconnected number would do her, and Senator Kircher for that matter, no particular good, she crossed out the prefix and composed, instead, a three-word note:
HAPPY CASTING, SENATOR!
Thinking that once her ordeal ended, if it ever did, she might consider paying a visit on Mrs. Alan Kircher, or perhaps the assignment editor at 60 Minutes, Laramie stood and handed the folded pages of her makeshift essay to the receptionist.
“Please give that to somebody on the senator’s staff,” she said, and jerked her thumb toward the door Rob Lowe had used. “Preferably somebody besides him.”
Then Laramie walked out of Kircher’s waiting room and exited the building.
38
Admiral Li came down to the poolside lounge and found a stool at the bar. He wore the Bermuda shorts and tropical-print short-sleeved shirt he’d found in one of the revolutionary brotherhood gift bags. Spike Gibson, biceps protruding obscenely from a white tank top, sat three stools from Li, sipping a creatine shake. Hiram stood behind the counter, wiping down the glassware.
Gibson grinned as Li took his stool.
“Afternoon, Admiral.” As he always did in the presence of Li or Deng, Gibson spoke in Mandarin.
Li bowed from the shoulders up. Hiram moved over to draw even with him at the bar.
“Buy you a drink?” Gibson said.
Hiram’s long, narrow fingers, exuding the false impression of sluggishness, combined a series of juices and rum over ice, sprinkled the selection with nutmeg and cinnamon, and, on a small white napkin, pushed the glass across the counter into Li’s palm.
Li took a sip, savored the flavor of the drink, and nodded.
“Painkiller,” Gibson said.
“Yours?”
Gibson shrugged, taking a tremendous gulp of his shake. “Creatine and nonfat milk with pineapple and banana chunks.”
“Creatine?”
“Highly refined protein.”
Li nodded. “Steroids, then.”
“Not in my temple, Admiral. I prefer all-natural foods.”
“Such as bananas and pineapples.”
“Correct.”
“But this ‘creatine’ is a steroid, no? Certain American baseball players come to mind.”
“That’s Andro. Or worse.”
“There is a difference?”
“Vast.”
“Mister?”
Li turned sharply at the bright, light voice and watched, first in delight, then in increasing disgust, as a young American girl in a bikini, not a day older than fourteen, came out of the bright sun into the shade of the bar’s thatched roof. She was so drunk she could barely walk, but she made her way to Spike Gibson’s side nonetheless. The girl wore diamond earrings, a pink iPod Mini, sunglasses, a bracelet on each wrist, and an anklet above one foot. Her bikini top had slipped off one shoulder to expose a nipple; she was slick with a blend of tanning oil and perspiration, her blondish hair held back with a clip.
Gibson said, “Pardon me, Admiral.”
At that point the girl leaned in, and Gibson kissed her with a sloppy, tongue-ridden kiss, Gibson fondling the girl’s exposed breast with one hand, cupping her hip and ass with the other. Li stared. The girl removed an earpiece, twirled a loop of hair with her finger, and said something close-in to Gibson. Gibson said something back, turned to Hiram, said, “Rum punch,” waited for Hiram to hand him the drink, gave it to the girl, then squeezed her tiny ass as she turned and stumbled back to the pool. She ducked out of view and into the lounge chair in which she’d been planted before her approach.
“Spoiled rich girl down from New England,” Gibson said. “Connecticut. Parents think she’s on a boat ride. She likes to party.”
Gibson polished off his creatine shake and reached above his head, stretching his massive arms.
“Listen, Admiral,” he said. “I’m scheduled for a forty-minute exercise circuit in my gym. You look like a man who’s in excellent physical condition. You’re welcome to join me for the workout.”